Executive Summary

Where is Dr. Yoder?

I'll leave him a message

We wanted a way for students to be able to leave audio (and possibly video) messages for professors when they are out of their office. Using a BeagleBoard Bone, we plan to connect a wireless USB device and a PlayStation Eye to achieve this. Students will be able to walk up to the device and press a button to record their message which will then be available for the professor.

At this time, we have a method for capturing audio for a specified amount of time and encoding that recording into a mp3 file. We also have python script that allows the user to send email messages to another email by running a script. We also have a working external power source for the beagle.

The wireless usb adapter does not work at this time. We are still trying to get recompile the kernel to install and enable the driver for this wireless adapter.

Overall we are looking at creating a c program that will record the audio while the button is being pressed. Once the button has been released the program will encode the raw audio into mp3 format, and then attach it via an email and send it to the owner of the Beagle VNS system.

Hardware

BeagleBone

PlayStation Eye

Belkin N150 Micro Wireless USB Adapter

BeagleBone

This project is design primarily for the BeagleBone, but could be implemented on any other Beagle Board given the proper driver installation for the USB hardware and available GPIOs. The BeagleBone is applicable for this project due to is small size, low power consumption, and networking capabilities. Make sure to use the A5 image of Ångström as the A6 image is still buggy with respect to audio/video capturing, as well as using the USB WiFi drivers.

Further BeagleBone documentation can be found on the official Beagle Board website.

In this project tutorial, we will be using the PlayStation Eye as the audio and video source to recod messages and capture face images. The PlayStation Eye is very compatible with the A5 image of Ångström and used in many other Beagle embedded Linux projects.

Here we would like to use a WiFi dongle to easily connect to surrounding wireless networks for ease of installation and placement in the remote stretches of hallways and doorframes. We will need we will need network connectivity to transmit e-mails and recording attachments over to an available e-mail server account. In particularly we are using the Belkin N150 Micro Wireless USB Adapter.

Although this device is not natively supported with the stock A5 image of Ångström, a brief tutorial has already been made on how to compile and install the device drivers for this particular wireless USB adapter: Belkin Micro Wi-Fi USB dongle on the BeagleBoard

Battery Pack and USB Hub

To again better a ease installation and quick deployment for our system we are using a battery pack to provide power for the BeagleBone, the WiFi dongle and the USB camera. Due to the hottest limitations of the Beagle bones single USB port, in addition to the limited amount of current that the single USB port can provide, we will also use a USB hub with power adapter to solve both issues.

In order for the end user to trigger the recording sequence, we will implement a traditional mechanical momentary pushbutton that will connect to the BeagleBone’s GPIO using the enabled internal pull-up resistors.

LED

As a simple display, our project will utilize a simple LED as an indicator for the user that the audio is currently being recorded and that a face capture will be taken.

Software

Angstrom A5 Image

In order to use the camera drivers for the playstation eye you will need to install the A5 image on the beagle bone. To do this you will need to download the A5 image. Then you will need to install this image on the sd card of the BeagleBone using the instructions bases on ECE 497 Exercise 03 Installing a Beagle OS.

github

In order to use the project code for the Beagle VNS, you will need github installed in order to download the code. If you do not have github there are instruction on how to install it on the ECE Exercise 16 web page.